Other Goodies

50 MHz28 August 2009: I have been a few days "out of town". Today we saw a late Es opening to SV and EA. A few stations could be worked.19 August 2009: I did some EME listening and tropo beacon "DX" receiving with SDR software. Today we have some small Es to CT. Only beacons - no humans ...13 August 2009: Some strange signals this morning. Lots of Es from the east - no stations. Worked OZ1DOQ(JO74mx-new#) in his Bornholm 4/6m expedition.12 August 2009: I did some listening in the Perseids and a few meteorscatter contacts. Nothing new.11 August 2009: Perseids, some MS contacts made. Nothing special. In the afternoon there was some Es to LZ, UX and I39 August 2009: Strong video signals from UA-TV; some station audible. It is late in the Es season where people get tired.8 August 2009: I was not QRV through the last days; I have heard I missed nothing. Today some stations heard and worked from south-east.5 August 2009: Nothing yesterday. Today there are very strong signals from southern Germany, Switzerland and Northern Italy. I worked a good number of stations. I thought 2m might open, but it did not. Some double-hop video signals from the east were received, but no stations heard.3 August 2009: Massive opening to south-east again. I did not have much time and have been listening a bit. 6m sounded like 40m with very strong signals present. Many closer stations could be heard via backscatter.2 August 2009: Band continues to be open to south-east. Nothing special heard. Sporadically I looked over 6m and heard some EA, CT and worked a few I8. Around 18.20UT I saw in the cluster people working caribean stations. I turned west and immediately could work WP2B (FK77) through the noise of neighbours plasma TV. At least a new grid.1 August 2009: The new preamplifier also seems to improve very audible. I supposed it would have an effect on EME signals only. Band opened in the afternoon very fine and I worked YO, LZ, Z3, SV, 5B4 and 4X. 5N0OCH could only be heard very weak here.

432 MHz11 August 2009: Checked sunnoise on 70cm and I get up to 7 dB at sunset. Normally I see abaout 4dB. There seems to be a good amount of ground gain. Worked number of stations in the NAC.10 August 2009: That SK1UHF beacon is still there even after a weather change.9 August 2009: SK1UHF and SK7MHH beacons over 500 .. 600km path are very strong. Noone is QRV.1 August 2009: New preamplifier installed. Hearing very much better now ! I worked YL3AG (KO06 - #102) with my 15 Watts over 777km path in the evening.

WSPR28 .. 31 August 2009: WSPR is running again with the RX320D. Today I put some ferrites to my HP TFT monitor. This made the bands (30m and 40m) alomost noise free. I thought that monitor was OK ...22 August 2009: My RX320D came into new life with WSPR - only receiving. That little box works really well on 30m.16 August 2009: I ran WSPR on the last three nights (30m, 40m, 20m) into the 40m wire dipole untuned. My 2 watt signal was heard into Australia on 40m several times.

WSPR (Weak Signal Propagation Reporter) is a piece of software written by K1JT starting in 2007. I have been doing this successfully that year and a little bit in 2008. I use my TS690s with power output fully turned down, which gives me about 2 watt then. I only have one antenna this is my 40m full size wire dipole. With only 2 watts of output from the transmitter I "risk" to do 2 minute transmissions without matching the antenna. 20m is not very successful, but 30m works OK for me. 40m is good with a very good antenna match here. I suffer somewhat from the overall noise present on the short wave bands, but still I can receive stations from all over the world. If you want to know more about WSPR have a look here: WSPRNET.ORG. This should give you an idea of what is is. After a long pause, I ran this WSPR again. The 30m band has been most successful. Reason for this is of course the highest activity is here. 40m worked too, but with only 20% of the activity compared to 30m, you will get lessd response of course. Activity on 20m is weak - so was the response. You will hear my signal again.

Every time you want to work THE DX, you will find some high level noise on the band. Recently WP2B was strong enough on 6m to overcome this noise - I was lucky. Yesterday (4 August) I got fed up with this and I went out to my neighbour and try to find the source(s) of the trouble. Just to make it short: He was very cooperative and we found an USV for the computers which seems to have some oscillation in the power supply. Second source was a Philips LCD TV set putting out a broad noise. We only needed a few minutes to find this.
On 7 August the cores arrived, my neighbour istalled them himself - well done - ét voila, all noise is almost gone. Very little broadband noise is still audible, when the TV set is switched on. In this view I am happy again ...

Today I took down the tower and checked everything. All was OK and I installed receive preamplifiers for 432 MHz and 50 MHz very close to the feedpoint of the antenna. While the 50 MHz amplifier is a commersial type, the 70cm amp is completely homemade with an old MGF1203 inside and 0,66 dB noise figure including all relais. For 70cm I expected a lot of improvement, and indeed I have it. Beacons not audible with pre-amp OFF are well in the receiver with the machine switched on. I did not expect an audible improvement on 50 MHz, but it is well audible. This amplifier has a noise figure of 0,95 dB I measured with a HP8970B recently. I am a bit astonished...
New images of the antenna system are HERE

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